WEBSITE REDESIGN SEO CASE STUDY
How We Recovered a 97% Organic Traffic Drop After a Website Redesign
One month, Imhoff Painting was getting over 300 organic visits a day. The next? Barely ten. A sleek new “done-for-you” website had wiped out much of what was helping them get found online. We helped them recover what was working, rebuild what wasn’t, and ultimately increase tracked conversions by 75% versus their original site.
Imhoff Fine Residential Painting · Residential painting · Denver, Colorado
Doug Imhoff
Founder, Imhoff Fine Residential Painting
Imhoff Painting’s old site wasn’t pretty, but it had something much more valuable: years of accumulated search visibility. Dozens of service pages, hundreds of blog posts and a strong backlink profile were bringing in roughly 300 organic visits a day.
The problem wasn’t that the site had no value. It was that the site needed a better design and a better conversion experience without throwing that value away.
organic visits per day restored within about a month
organic keywords tracked by Semrush in August 2024
increase in tracked conversions versus the original site
IN DOUG’S WORDS
The challenge: A redesign couldn’t erase years of SEO value
Imhoff’s original website had a lot going for it under the hood. It had grown a large footprint on the web: dozens of service pages, hundreds of blog posts and a strong backlink profile. Around 300 organic visits a day were finding the site, but too few of those visitors were turning into customers.
So a redesign made sense. The mistake was treating the existing website like there was nothing worth preserving.
The crash: Traffic fell from 300+ visits a day to under 10
The new “done-for-you” site looked cleaner, but it stripped away most of the content and URLs that had been earning search visibility. Their content-rich site was replaced with a clean, minimal, five-page site.
No redirects. No blog. No service pages.
Just a brochure.
Within a month, the damage was hard to miss:
- Organic traffic dropped from over 300 to under 10 visits a day.
- Total keyword rankings fell from roughly 1,100 to about 130.
- Top-three Google rankings fell from 25 pages/keywords to just 2.
Their site looked nice, but no one could find it. That’s when they called Hog the Web back in.
Planning a redesign? Protect what already works.
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The diagnosis: Hundreds of ranking URLs and backlink destinations disappeared
A little sleuthing in Google Search Console showed us exactly what happened. The old site wasn’t pretty, but it had been doing some heavy lifting under the hood. Valuable pages had disappeared, old URLs no longer resolved properly and backlinks that once pointed to useful content were now landing on 404 errors.
We’ve seen this before. Too many times. It’s also one of the first things we check when diagnosing a sudden website traffic drop after a redesign or migration.
Service pages and blog posts that had earned visibility were no longer on the new site.
Without redirects, previously useful URLs returned 404s and links pointing to them lost their destination.
We recovered valuable content, rebuilt URL paths where practical and created redirects where URLs needed to change.
The recovery: Restore what worked, improve what didn’t
Luckily, Imhoff had a full backup of the original site. Our job was to keep the content and pages that were bringing in search traffic while fixing the weaknesses that had limited conversions.
This was our process:
- Recover the original service pages and useful blog content.
- Rebuild the URL structure exactly as it was, or create permanent redirects as needed.
- Design a fresh new layout with a much better user experience.
- Build additional service-specific landing pages.
- Link pages intelligently for users and search engines.
- Add stronger calls to action, proof and testimonials.
For instance, the old service pages had helpful content but lacked portfolio sections, compelling testimonials and clear calls to action. We kept the substance, then made the pages much better at doing their actual job: helping people choose Imhoff.
That same “preserve first, improve second” approach now informs how we handle both WordPress SEO and custom website redesign projects.
The results: Traffic returned within a month—and conversions rose 75%
We relaunched the rebuilt site in late July 2024. Within about a month, organic search traffic recovered to roughly 300 visits a day. Keyword visibility also rebounded as search engines recrawled and reindexed the restored site.
More importantly, the rebuilt experience performed better for the people who actually reached it: tracked conversions increased 75% versus the original website, based on GA4 conversion-event tracking with spam form submissions excluded.
Source: Semrush Organic Keywords report for imhoffpaintingcompany.com, September 2023–August 2024. The report shows 176 tracked organic keywords in July 2024 and 893 in August 2024 after the relaunch.
Source: Ahrefs Organic Traffic report for imhoffpaintingcompany.com, December 2023–October 2024. Ahrefs traffic is a third-party estimate, so we use it here to show the direction of the recovery rather than as first-party session data.
The takeaway: Redesign the website, not the search footprint
This isn’t just a one-off story. We see this mistake all the time: a business replaces its website like it’s trading in an old car. But websites aren’t cars. They’re ecosystems. Every useful page, every link and every mention across the web can have value.
Wipe that out without a plan, and search performance can disappear with it.
A smart redesign means:
- Auditing what’s already working — pages, rankings, backlinks and user behavior.
- Preserving your search footprint — or intentionally building on it.
- Designing for humans first — usability, trust and conversion, not aesthetics alone.
- Understanding the business — avoiding one-size-fits-all solutions.
When we rebuild sites, we don’t bulldoze over everything. We start by listening, dive into the data, keep the assets that earned their place and improve the weak points. That’s especially important for established local businesses such as painting contractors, where years of service-area relevance and backlinks can be difficult to recreate from scratch. See more about our approach to web design for painting contractors.
Website Redesign SEO FAQ
Can a website redesign hurt SEO?
Yes. A redesign can cause a major SEO decline when ranking content is removed, URLs change without redirects, internal links disappear, or important pages become harder for search engines to crawl and understand.
How do you redesign a website without losing Google rankings?
Audit the current site’s rankings, traffic, backlinks and URLs before the redesign. Preserve valuable content and URLs where possible, create permanent redirects when URLs must change, retain strong internal links, and monitor Google Search Console closely after launch.
Can organic traffic recover after a bad website redesign?
Often, yes. Recovery depends on what was lost and how quickly the problems are corrected. In Imhoff’s case, restoring valuable pages, URL paths and SEO signals helped organic traffic return to around 300 visits per day within about a month of relaunch.
What should you check first if traffic dropped after a redesign?
Start by comparing the old and new URL inventories, checking redirects and 404 errors, reviewing Google Search Console indexing and performance data, and identifying previously ranking pages or backlink destinations that disappeared.
Planning a redesign? Let’s protect what you’ve already earned.
A better website shouldn’t mean starting over in Google. We’ll review what’s working, what needs fixing and how to move forward without bulldozing the SEO value you’ve spent years building.
